


Transsexual Transylvania

by CallieB



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A Monthly Rumbelling, F/M, be my guest, kind of, rocky horror picture show au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 13:58:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7055332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallieB/pseuds/CallieB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Belle French and her fiancé Gaston find themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere with a broken-down car and no signal, they decide to seek help at a nearby castle. However, they're totally unprepared for what - and whom - they will find inside...</p>
<p>A Rocky Horror Picture Show AU (or at least, it started that way) for the Monthly Rumbelling prompt 'Be My Guest'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transsexual Transylvania

**Author's Note:**

> When I was brainstorming for this prompt, I said to my other half: “I want something kind of weird, and fantastical, but also maybe funny and almost dreamlike, so you don’t question how weird it is. I’m thinking some kind of dinner party where you’re not allowed to leave, and where everyone is completely crazy and you’re the only normal one. Something a bit out of the ordinary."
> 
> He said: “That sounds like Rocky Horror.”
> 
> So that’s how this happened. Kind of. It’s a bit Rocky Horror. And then it isn’t. It spiralled, is what I’m saying!

The first time Belle sees him, in spite of all the other fantastic things she’s seen tonight, her brain makes a fizzling sound and just about short-circuits.

He’s not a man. That’s the first thing she notices. His skin is a greenish-grey, sparkling like a piece of well-carved granite in the warm light coming from the chandelier above their heads. His hair is a mass of shimmering curls bouncing on his shoulders, and his eyes… Big, silvery, inhuman and _glittering_ at her, dancing with amusement. A wicked little smile curves his shining lips.

They’ve taken her clothes by this point, so it’s no real surprise when his eyes flicker across her body; they don’t linger, however, returning almost instantaneously to her face. Caught in this surreal dream, Belle can’t bring herself to mind that she’s standing in nothing more than her underwear, being surveyed by the master of the house. In fact, she catches herself feeling almost disappointed that he doesn’t display a little more interest in her half-naked form. If he wasn’t going to look, why did he have them remove her clothes?

Beside her, Gaston is obviously far less impressed by the forcible nudity, given how loudly he’s complaining. His feet are planted squarely on the gleaming parquet floor, his hands clasped in front of his loose white boxer shorts as he demands that his clothes are returned to him at once. Questions the morals of the fiends who have stolen them from him. Accuses them of perversion, of kidnapping, of assault.

He may be right, Belle supposes. It’s not every day that a party of strangers removes your clothes by force in order to parade you in front of their master. Under normal circumstances, she really ought to be offended.

“Good evening, dearies.” The glittering man’s voice is a high-pitched trill; his eyes remain focused on Belle, although he appears to be addressing both of them. He dips into a low, mocking bow, spreading his arms wide.

“G-good evening,” Belle says automatically. She rather feels as though she ought to curtsey, although of course, without her neat little skirt suit it’s rather impractical to do so.

Gaston’s mouth hangs open, almost comically. “Good evening?” he blusters loudly. “How can you… I demand that you…”

“Yes, yes,” their host interrupts, flapping an impatient, blackened hand at him. Just for a moment, his wide grey eyes flutter down to Belle’s stomach. Not her breasts, or her hips, or anywhere else that could properly be called inappropriate. Just her stomach. Then, just as quickly, his gaze skitters away again. “My name is Rumpelstiltskin,” he says. He rolls the R of his name impressively.

“Belle French,” Belle replies. Gaston is still making indignant noises next to her, so she introduces him as well. “Gaston, my fiancé.”

“Fiancé!” Rumpelstiltskin exclaims, darting a little closer towards them. He’s wearing tight black leather trousers beneath a richly embroidered waistcoat and loose white shirt; Belle, unexpectedly, finds her eyes wandering to areas far more inappropriate that his _stomach_. “Marriage,” their odd little host continues. “ _Love_. Exquisite!” He laughs, a strange, childlike titter.

“We just want to use your _phone_ ,” Gaston says piteously. He shoots Belle a baleful look. Of course, it had been her idea to come here, when the car broke down and they realised that neither of them had any signal. It was pouring with rain and she’d remembered seeing the enormous, cast-iron gates to the house further back down the road.

She hadn’t realised at the time that this would be the result. She wonders, vaguely, if she would still have suggested it had she known beforehand.

When she turns from Gaston’s blame-filled eyes, she realises that Rumpelstiltskin has disappeared. Again, she supposes that that’s the sort of thing that ought to shock her, but it doesn’t. She’s in a dream, a magical dream that she’s rather enjoying in spite of herself, and everyone knows that anything can happen in a dream.

Now the strange man in the battered top hat and purple velvet dinner jacket who spoke to them earlier steps forward again, taking her elbow. “Rumpelstiltskin has gone back to his laboratory,” he tells her in a slightly pompous tone. A collective mutter runs around the room; Belle looks quickly at the crowd, who until now have been gathered quietly, their work apparently done once they had taken her clothes.

“His laboratory?” she says uncertainly. “He’s a scientist?”

The man smiles, all teeth. “Of a sort,” he says rather ominously, winking one black-rimmed eye.

Now the murmuring is increasing, rising into outright chatter. Belle looks again at Rumpelstiltskin’s guests; they’re all dressed rather oddly, a muddle of feathers and glitter and brightly coloured petticoats mixed in with old-fashioned bodices and long tailed coats. Several of them are whispering behind their hands, bright curious eyes fixed on Belle and Gaston.

Out of the corner of her eye, Belle senses movement; she turns to see the maid who first let them into the house picking her way between the guests towards them. Incongruous in her dull black dress amongst this array of brightly coloured people, she’s easily noticeable in the ballroom. Like Belle and Gaston, she doesn’t fit in here at all.

She’s not holding the old-fashioned broom she’d had clutched in her wiry hands when she first admitted them to the house; instead, she plucks up her skirts so they don’t drag on the floor. Gaston had turned on the charm, hoping to persuade her to let them in out of the rain. It had obviously worked better than he had expected.

She stops in front of Belle, letting her skirt fall back into place. She’s taller than Belle – most people are – but she keeps her eyes downcast, her soft, oddly melodic voice muted.

“My master asks you to join him in his laboratory,” she says quietly.

“Well!” Gaston interrupts loudly. “I think the first order of business is to return our clothes immediately, d’you hear? And then—”

But the maid has already turned to walk away, weaving around the guests – now spilling back out into the centre of the ballroom – with practised care. Gaston splutters for a while, but Belle turns back to the man in the purple coat.

“How do we get there, sir?” she asks him.

The man laughs. “I’m no sir,” he says, although he tips his moth-eaten hat to her all the same. “The name’s Jefferson, milady. Allow me to escort you.”

He offers her his arm, and Belle slips her hand into the crook of it. If this is a dream, she can ignore Gaston’s outraged explosion of speech, she can ignore Gaston entirely and just allow events to occur as they like. Anything, she reminds herself, is allowed in a dream.

“Belle!” Gaston hisses at her, scurrying beside her as she and Jefferson walk across the ballroom towards a pair of gleaming golden elevator doors. “Belle, we have to get out of here! These people are madmen!”

“Yes, I expect so,” she agrees serenely.

He stares at her for a moment, obviously bewildered by her response. Belle is struck, as she has been struck before, by how very confusing she must be to a man so straightforward as Gaston.

“Well, then!” he manages at last. “We have to get out of here!”

They come to a halt in front of the elevator doors; Jefferson, who has so far refrained from commenting on their discussion, presses the single button to call the lift.

“We can’t,” Belle says reasonably. “We don’t have any clothes, or money, or a phone. The car has broken down, and even if it hadn’t, they’ve taken the car keys. We’re miles away from anywhere. Where would we go?”

Gaston’s mouth opens and closes silently for a few moments; he obviously hadn’t expected her to have thought so carefully about the situation. This annoys Belle; she may be a little ethereal at times, but no one’s ever accused her of being _stupid_.

“You don’t know what he plans to do to us!” Gaston bursts out.

“I trust him,” she replies simply. “And even if I didn’t,” she adds quickly, before he can ask her on what possible basis she’s placing that trust, “we haven’t got a choice anyway.”

There’s very little he can say to that, for which Belle is thankful. A little bell chimes, and the golden doors slide noiselessly open; she, Jefferson, and, after a moment’s hesitation, Gaston, step inside the elevator. Jefferson presses another button, and the doors close again. Belle feels a little rush in her stomach as it begins to travel upwards.

“I can see why he likes you,” Jefferson says, an undercurrent of humour in his tone. “ _Quite_ the girl!”

He’s not talking about Gaston, Belle can tell that much; he can only mean Rumpelstiltskin, and for some reason – probably because she’s dreaming, and dreams often take unusual form – the thought that Rumpelstiltskin _likes_ her makes Belle smile. Jefferson notices at once, raising a finger to brush the edges of her lips and shaking his head in amusement.

All at once, the elevator comes to a halt with a faint _ting_ , and the golden doors open once more. Jefferson, completely ignoring Gaston – who follows nonetheless, still gaping like a fish – leads Belle out of the lift.

The room they’re in is definitely a laboratory; there are steel tables covered in test tubes, complicated-looking machines, silver tools in little trays. However, it could just as easily – to Belle’s overactive, Harry Potter-fed imagination – be described as a potion room. A large copper pan bubbles on a stovetop near the window; phials and oddly-shaped jars are dotted around the room, each filled with brightly coloured liquid, glittering unnaturally. The walls are curved, made out of large smooth grey stones with stained glass windows.

Rumpelstiltskin himself is standing over at the far side of the room, beside a long grey freezer pushed against the wall. Belle feels the same little thrill of the other-worldly when she sees him; she sucks in a small sharp breath, and his strange silver eyes flick immediately over to her. He’s wearing a thick black apron over the top of his elaborate outfit.

“You’ve arrived,” he trills in his odd, singsong voice. “Come in, dearie!” He glances briefly at Gaston. “Dearies,” he amends.

Belle has, by now, almost forgotten that she’s only wearing her simple blue cotton underwear. She steps into the laboratory, looking around, although common sense prevents her from touching anything. Gaston, who has clearly _not_ forgotten his nakedness, judging by the way he keeps crossing and uncrossing his arms in front of his chest, follows behind her. Jefferson, an expression of droll amusement on his face, strides in and seats himself on a nearby chair.

“What are you working on?” Belle asks Rumpelstiltskin. She can’t be sure, given his oddly-hued skin, but she thinks he blushes at the question. When he answers, however, his voice is airy and unconcerned.

“Oh, magic, dearie,” he says, waving a hand. He leans towards her – she’s just a couple of feet away from him now, without quite knowing how she got there – and says significantly: “Raising the dead.”

Belle blinks at him. “Really?” she says, impressed.

He grins at her, showing a set of rotted green teeth. Belle, somehow inches away from his face, wonders abstractly what it might be like to kiss him. His mouth certainly _looked_ unpleasant, but that was no indication of how it might taste. Gaston’s teeth were white and straight and even, and she’d never particularly enjoyed kissing _him_.

The moment passes, and she draws herself back a little. This might be a dream, but Gaston is still in the room, still engaged to her. She wonders if her thoughts are showing on her face; Rumpelstiltskin is still grinning at her.

“Oh, yes, dearie,” he breathes. “I’ve a dead man in this room at this very moment, as it happens. All it takes is a little magic to bring him back.”

Perhaps she ought to feel disgusted, repulsed by this information. Gaston makes a revolted sound behind her; Jefferson gives a low chuckle. But Belle is surprisingly unfazed by the idea that she’s sharing the laboratory with a dead man; all she can say, bluntly, is: “Where is he?”

Rumpelstiltskin smiles even wider. “Would you like to see him, dearie?” he whispers. “I was rather hoping you would.” He titters shrilly.

“Alright,” Belle says.

Her strange little host dances away, over to the freezer behind him. Belle looks over at it; of course, the body must be in there. Where else could a man be kept in this place? Rumpelstiltskin slides a glittering hand over the top of the freezer, his expression almost reverent. Then he looks up, not at Belle but at Gaston, and his eyes grow suddenly cold.

“I didn’t invite _you_ , dearie,” he says sharply. His gaze flickers over to Jefferson. “Take the boy away, Hatter, I have no call for _him_ here.”

“You can’t—” Gaston begins heatedly, but Jefferson takes his elbow, sweeping him back towards the elevator. “Belle!” Gaston shouts. “Belle!”

“You won’t hurt him?” Belle says hastily to Rumpelstiltskin.

“Why would I?” Rumpelstiltskin replies, sounding rather bored with the topic. Belle smiles. She has no reason to trust this odd man, showing up unwarranted in her dreams, but somehow she knows that she can. He’s not sending Gaston away to hurt him; rather, he wants her for something, and Gaston’s bluster merely gets in the way.

When the elevator doors have closed on Jefferson and a still-arguing Gaston, Rumpelstiltskin darts back to the freezer, lifting up the lid. Belle follows more slowly. Will she be afraid of the dead man? She’s never seen a body before. Hesitantly, she approaches the freezer, and peers over the edge.

She realises at once that she was wrong – it’s not a freezer at all, just a box in which to keep the dead man. There’s no chill, no frost as she touches the edge of the container. There is also no scent of death, no rot. She gazes down at the man inside.

He’s a young man, her age, or perhaps a little older; dark hair, stubble around his chin and the sides of his face, and smooth cheeks and forehead. His eyes are closed, as peaceful as though merely sleeping. She finds herself smiling at him. He looks gentle, kind.

She looks up at Rumpelstiltskin. “Who is he?” she asks.

His answering smile, she thinks, is just a little sad. “You like what you see, dearie?” he asks softly.

Belle looks back down at the man. It’s hard to believe that he’s dead; he doesn’t look the way she would have imagined someone dead would have done. “He looks nice,” she says.

“Nicer than that boy you’re marrying,” he singsongs. Belle looks up sharply at him.

“You don’t like Gaston,” she says. It isn’t a question; it doesn’t need to be. The answer is obvious.

“Do you?” Rumpelstiltskin asks. He moves a little nearer to her. “Do you love him?”

“Of course,” Belle says automatically. “That is—”

_Does_ she love Gaston? They’ve been together since they were children, so long that she’s never really questioned her attachment to him. Their families are friends; they grew up together. Everyone expected them to get engaged, and so they have. But love? Does she love him?

“I think… I think love is layered,” she says, a little uncertainly at first but her voice growing stronger as she speaks. “A mystery to be uncovered.” She smiles, self-conscious. “I’m not sure that’s what I have with Gaston.

He’s very, very close to her now; just the slightest movement of her head would close the little gap between them, press their lips together…

“Perhaps… another…” he murmurs delicately.

“Yes, perhaps,” she agrees, half breathless. Perhaps it’s all a dream, but she wants to kiss him, she wants…

“A kiss would be all it takes,” he says, his mouth so close she can feel his words ghosting on her skin. All the singsong quality is gone, his voice low and rough. “A kiss, to see if you could love another.”

“A kiss?” she repeats, a little foolishly.

There’s a pause between them, stretching on so long that she almost does it on her own, almost leans forward to kiss him – but then, impossibly, he steps back, away from her. Gestures down at the dead man that she had all but forgotten.

“A kiss,” he says, and the unnatural trill is back in his voice. “Kiss away, dearie.”

She blinks at him; it’s like a dream shattering, the stillness of the moment they had shared broken in a second. “Him?” she says stupidly, louder than she had intended. She glances at the dead man. “Kiss _him_?”

He stares at her. “Who else?”

She stares straight back, utterly bewildered. “Why would I kiss a dead man?” she asks bluntly. There’s a silence in the room; this time it’s uncomfortable, and Belle, rather pathetically, finds herself wishing that Gaston would come back.

Rumpelstiltskin says abruptly: “He’s not dead.” He walks away, past her, and goes to sit on a low purple futon underneath the window; his apron creaks as he seats himself.

Belle watches him; his sparkling face is creased, his mouth downturned. He may hide behind glitter and outrageousness, but underneath it all she can sense a deep sadness in him. She looks back at the man in the container; suddenly, more than before, she wonders who he is. Not his name, but who he is to Rumpelstiltskin. Why would the strange little man keep a body in his laboratory? This is no meaningless lab rat. The dead man means something.

“Who is he?” she asks softly. She moves towards the futon, perching herself at the end.

Rumpelstiltskin looks at her as though transfixed. He says, slowly: “ _My son_ …”

She hears her own sharp intake of breath, although it’s not really a surprise. Who else could he be, if not a son? She slides a little closer to Rumpelstiltskin, and says hesitantly: “You said… you said he’s not dead?”

Wearily, her odd little host shakes his head, his glittering curls quivering with the motion. “Not dead,” he confirms. “Merely sleeping.”

Well, she had thought he didn’t look to be truly dead. It would explain why he was so well preserved. “Why doesn’t he wake up?” she asks.

“Magic,” Rumpelstiltskin says dully. “Only True Love’s Kiss can wake him.”

Somehow, she doesn’t need to question his words. Is it because she’s trapped in the strangest dream she’s ever had? Perhaps. This entire place is so surreal that anything could happen and she would believe it. If he tells her that his son cannot wake until one who truly loves him has kissed him, then she believes him.

“You hoped that I might be his true love,” she says flatly.

“Every woman I meet,” Rumpelstiltskin whispers. “I have them all kiss him, whether by choice or by force.” His head drops into his hands. “Men too, although he never tended that way.”

“You didn’t ask Gaston,” Belle observes.

Rumpelstiltskin’s head comes up again abruptly; he laughs sourly. “That pompous fool?” he says scornfully. “Baelfire had better taste than _that_ , dearie.”

“Baelfire,” Belle repeats, testing the name on her tongue. “I like that,” she says.

The ghost of his gleaming smile lights up Rumpelstiltskin’s face briefly. “I named him,” he says. “Long ago, now.”

“How did this happen to him?” she asks.

“A sorceress,” Rumpelstiltskin tells her, still looking straight ahead. “She loved me, or thought she did, and sought to punish me when I turned her down.”

Belle is filled with anguish for him at the injustice of it. “She hurt your son to punish you?” She can hear the anger in her voice; anger is so rare for her that the force of it rather takes her aback.

“Oh, she did much worse than that, dearie,” Rumpelstiltskin says, his voice so low and quiet that Belle has to strain to hear it. She looks over to him; he sits so still he could be carved from stone. “She’s the reason I’m trapped here, forced to do her bidding. Forced to host her friends, to keep my own imprisoned with me.”

Belle dares to reach out her hand, touching his arm; when he doesn’t resist, she strokes it through the loose cotton. He shivers at her touch, his eyes closing briefly. In that moment, nothing else matters; not Gaston, not the fact that she still isn’t wearing any clothes, nothing except her hand on Rumpelstiltskin’s arm. She lets it slide down, lets her fingertips brush the back of his hand. He feels softer, warmer than she had expected, although still rough with the stony scales that have him so bewitched. Is this what she did to him? Did she make him look this way?

He must guess what she’s thinking, because he looks sideways at her. “I was a monster long before the sorceress cast her wicked spell, dearie,” he says quietly. He looks over to the box where his son is contained. “He hated me for it.”

“Baelfire?” she asks. Her thumb strokes his knuckles, feeling the ingrained sparkle of his skin. “He didn’t like you this way?”

“Not my appearance,” he says with a dull laugh. “He wasn’t so shallow.”

She tips her head to one side, her fingers curling around his. His hand is rigid in her grasp, but he doesn’t shake her off. “Then what?” she says.

“I’m very powerful, dearie,” Rumpelstiltskin tells her gently. “I did… Oh, I did monstrous things! All in the name of saving him, but he grew to hate me for it…”

“He’s your son,” she says. “He couldn’t hate you.” How could anyone, she wants to add. She can see the pain in the harsh lines of Rumpelstiltskin’s face, can see that whatever he’s done in the past, he’s sorry for it now. And if he did it to save his son… How can she judge him for that?

A thought occurs to her. “If you’re so powerful, can’t you defeat the sorceress?”

Rumpelstiltskin sighs, and she squeezes his hand. “The sorceress… has a weapon,” he tells her. “It compels me to obey her.” He turns suddenly to look at her, his silvery eyes searching her face. “Why am I telling you all this?” he asks wonderingly. He looks down at his granite hand, clasped in hers.

“You have to tell someone,” Belle points out reasonably. “Haven’t you told anyone before? All these people here…”

“Jefferson knows,” Rumpelstiltskin says. “He’s trapped here as much as I. The rest… some of them believe me to be the monster I always was before; others are her friends.” He shrugs, a minute gesture. “It matters little.”

Belle tightens her grip on his hand. “Of course it matters,” she says softly. She looks over at Baelfire. “How can we save him, Rumpelstiltskin?”

He takes a deep breath. “You would help me save him?” He laughs bitterly before she can answer. “Of course you would.” He breaths again, so deep that it rattles his entire body. “Could you love him? Would you… try?”

Belle bites her lip. “No,” she says in a small voice. He looks at her, not understanding. She can see that he doesn’t understand, that she’ll have to explain. She takes a deep breath of her own. “I don’t have to kiss him to know that I can’t love him.”

Rumpelstiltskin goes very, very still. “I see,” he says, his voice like the crack of a whip. Slowly, he removes his hand from her hold on it.

“Rumpelstiltskin?” Belle says uncertainly. “Couldn’t… couldn’t you kiss him? You love him, more than anyone else could.”

“Cora has ordered me not to,” he says bleakly.

“Cora?” she repeats. “Is that… is that the sorceress?”

“Indeed,” he says. “It amuses her to allow me to bring men and women up to this room, knowing as she does that they are strangers, that they cannot love him, that I can never succeed. But she has forbidden me from breaking the curse myself, and as long as she holds the dagger that controls me I have to obey. So what else can I do, but hope that another might love him as I do?” He looks sideways at her. “I thought you might… But it’s no matter.”

He stands, abruptly, striding off to the box, gazing down into it at his son. Belle watches him go, her heart aching for his pain.

“This dagger,” she says, rising herself. “Could we find it? If I found it, if we stole it… would it still have power over you?”

He turns around to look at her. “I don’t know where she’s hidden it,” he says cautiously.

“I don’t mind looking,” Belle says.

“She’s a dangerous woman,” he warns.

“I’m not afraid,” she tells him.

In a single, fluid movement, he’s by her side, barely a whisper away from her, gazing down at her with those beautiful eyes. They search her face, looking for something. “Why would you do this for me?” he asks softly.

Belle finds herself unexpectedly near tears; she passes her hand across her face, annoyed at the sudden emotion. “Rumpelstiltskin,” she says, keeping her voice as matter-of-fact as she can. “When I said I couldn’t love Baelfire, it’s not because of Gaston.” She reaches up, her fingers trembling, and touches his scaled face; he jerks in surprise, but doesn’t pulls away. His breathing has grown heavier, and for a moment his eyes flicker shut.

“It’s you,” Belle breathes. She strokes Rumpelstiltskin’s cheek, her thumb grazing the corner of his mouth. “How could I love Baelfire, when all I want to do is kiss his father?”

His eyes open at once, and his mouth opens; he’s going to say something to ruin it, she can feel it, he doesn’t believe her – but before he can, she closes the space between them, moves forward and presses her lips to his.

His mouth is soft beneath hers; for a moment he’s still, and she’s kissing a statue, but then, fluidly, he catches her up in his arms, and his lips start moving around hers. His hands move to capture her face, and she can feel something glorious bursting through her chest, something she’s never felt in all the years of kissing Gaston. He’s warm against her, heat radiating through his shirt and enveloping her, his scaled fingers running along her jaw, touching her ear.

Belle’s hand is still cupping his cheek; she moves it to run her fingers through his curls, touching the soft skin at the nape of his neck, sliding her hand down the back of his shirt. His shoulders are smooth beneath her touch, and that realisation suddenly makes her pause. Smooth? She’s just spent ten minutes holding his hand, she knows his skin isn’t smooth. Where’s the scaly roughness, the coarse granite that she’s grown accustomed to?

The same realisation seems to be hitting him; slowly they draw apart, and he stumbles backwards. Belle can only stare.

The man in front of her… is a man. Just a man. His hair is straighter, sleeker around his neck. His skin is as pale and human as hers, pink is the cheeks, all the unnatural glitter gone. And his eyes… The odd silver cat’s eyes that have transfixed Belle have disappeared. His eyes are human, a warm, buttery brown that set something trembling in the pit of her stomach as she looks into him.

He’s still everything that she’s fallen for him, but he’s a man where he wasn’t before.

He looks aghast at the change, fingering his hair, touching the skin on the back of his clean, pink hands. “H-how…” he gasps. “How did you do this?”

Belle doesn’t bother to answer. She launches herself at him again, her cheeks hurting at the strength of her smile, and fastens her mouth to his. And Rumpelstiltskin, in spite of his confusion, sinks into the kiss, closing his eyes as his tongue slips between her lips, sending shivers down to pool in a warm, comfortable place in the pit of her stomach.

“Well, well, Rumpelstiltskin,” says a voice, interrupting the blissful joy of the kiss.

She doesn’t particularly want to end the kiss, but Rumpelstiltskin freezes in her arms at the sound of the voice, going so still that it’s like embracing a piece of stone; slowly, Belle turns, still clinging to him.

“Cora,” Rumpelstiltskin says evenly.

“Rumpelstiltskin,” the woman standing in front of them answers calmly. Belle’s eyes widen.

It’s the maid who first let them into the house.

She’s dressed differently now; her dress is a rich scarlet, and her dark curls are bound ornately above her head. In her hand, held out in front of her, is a strange, silver dagger with a curved blade. There’s writing inscribed on the weapon, although Belle can’t make out the words. She shivers just at the sight of the dagger; there’s something very dark and ugly about it, although it’s more a feeling than anything she can pinpoint.

Smoothly, Rumpelstiltskin extracts himself from Belle’s embrace, stepping in front of her. “I can only assume you’ve been watching,” he says, his tone conversational.

“Oh, yes,” Cora says, smiling. It’s not a nice smile. “You seem to have got yourself into quite the predicament. No power at all!”

“Appearances can be deceptive,” Rumpelstiltskin says.

The sorceress only laughs. “Don’t try to fool me, Rumpelstiltskin,” she says, and Belle is struck again by how rich her voice is. “We’ve both been at this game far too long for that. That was True Love’s Kiss.” She looks rather scornfully at Belle. “To think that someone would love you!”

“True Love’s Kiss?” Belle repeats, bewildered.

“Breaks any curse, my dear,” Cora says grandly. She turns her attention back to Rumpelstiltskin. “Now, the question is… Does the dagger still hold power over you?” She grins wolfishly, her white teeth glittering at them. “Because if not… You’re just a man, now, Rumpelstiltskin.”

She holds the dagger forward. “Rumpelstiltskin, I command you,” she says, her voice ringing out through the laboratory. Her smile curves up, a little crueler. “Kiss me.”

Rumpelstiltskin’s voice is a hoarse whisper. “Never.”

Cora waits; he doesn’t move. She lets her hand drop, tossing the dagger to one side. “Useless to me, then,” she says carelessly. The blade falls with a clatter a few feet away; Belle can see, now, that the writing is simply Rumpelstiltskin’s name. The thought makes her heart ache.

The sorceress walks forward like a cat. “And now for you, Rumpelstiltskin,” she breathes. “I may not be able to control you through the dagger any more, but oh, the possibilities now that you’re a man!”

Belle feels herself crashing to the floor before she understands what has happened. Rumpelstiltskin has pushed her roughly out of the way; trying to protect her until the end, she thinks miserably. She’s landed nose to nose with the dagger, and recoils from its nasty, ugly atmosphere. Pushing her aside won’t do her much good, in the end; she doubts Cora will forget about her once she’s had her fun with Rumpelstiltskin.

Cora seems to be thinking along the same lines. “That’s very noble of you,” she says, sounding amused. “She can watch just as well from down there.”

She grips Rumpelstiltskin’s chin with one bony hand, pressing him back up against Baelfire’s box. Her other hand snakes around his waist, holding him so tightly that Belle’s afraid he won’t be able to breathe.

“Just a man, now,” she snarls into his ear. Belle has to force herself not to burst into tears. It won’t help Rumpelstiltskin, and anyway, she’s not upset. She’s angry, so angry that she feels like it could burst out of her and kill Cora on the spot. Her rage swirls around her, dark and fierce.

“Just a man,” Rumpelstiltskin agrees. “All the darkness fallen out of me.”

“All the power,” Cora says, biting down hard on Rumpelstiltskin’s earlobe.

“Power and darkness,” he says. “It’s a force of its own. It occupied every cell of my body, changed me. And then it was forced out, by a light magic so pure that it defeated even this great darkness.”

“And now you are nothing,” Cora breathes, tugging on Rumpelstiltskin’s hair so that his head is forced backwards. “Now you’re mine.”

But Belle isn’t listening to Cora. She’s frowning in concentration, because there’s something that she needs to understand – something elusive, something just out of reach to her. It’s got something to do with what Rumpelstiltskin is saying, and something to do with the incredible, fearsome _rage_ coursing through her body, like a force of its own. A force of its own, just like Rumpelstiltskin said.

Her gaze flickers to the dagger on the floor by her side.

“Power like that doesn’t just disappear,” Rumpelstiltskin says. “It has to be channelled somewhere. Normally, it would go into someone else. But the only other person alive in this room was the source of the light magic driving it out. It couldn’t settle in her.”

Belle picks up the dagger, feels the hot rage rushing through her at its touch.

Cora has drawn back a little, suddenly wary of Rumpelstiltskin’s exposition. “So where did it go?” she says cautiously.

“The only place it could go,” Rumpelstiltskin says, smiling over Cora’s shoulder. “Back into the dagger, waiting to be used.”

And Belle is there, ready, standing behind Cora, and she drives the dagger deep between the sorceress’s shoulder blades.

An ugly swirl of darkness rises from the blade; it coils around Cora’s body, knocking her out of Rumpelstiltskin’s stiff arms and encircling her. Then, just as soon as it arose, the darkness sinks back down again, into Cora’s body. She lies crumpled on the floor, the dagger protruding from the centre of her back.

There’s a long, long moment where neither Belle nor Rumpelstiltskin say anything.

Then, Belle says softly: “I killed her.”

“You saved me,” Rumpelstiltskin says quietly. She looks up into his warm brown eyes, and a little rush of something – love? – envelops her.

“I’m not sorry,” she says. “I should be, but I’m not.”

“Neither am I,” he says vehemently.

“Rumpelstiltskin,” she begins, starting forward. Will he still want her? Now that he’s free?

“Belle, my Belle,” he says, and then he’s there with her, his human hands touching her face, his lips moving against her mouth, and her heart is thumping so hard that she’s sure he must be able to feel it. She hugs him tightly, and feels him shudder against her in return.

When they break apart at last, she looks over at the box behind them. “You can do it now,” she says. “True Love’s Kiss.”

Rumpelstiltskin bites his lip, uncertainty colouring his cheeks. “What if it doesn’t work?” he says, so quietly she has to move closer to hear him.

“He’s your son,” Belle says. “He loves you.” She smiles. “It worked for us, didn’t it?”

He kisses her again, one arm encircling her waist. “How was I so fortunate as to find you?” he murmurs, his mouth on her temple.

She guides him over to Baelfire’s body. “Go on,” she says.

Rumpelstiltskin hesitates for a moment, just a moment, his arm tightening around Belle’s waist. Then he bends down, one hand touching his son’s hair, murmuring words that she can’t hear, and presses his lips to Baelfire’s forehead.

He draws back, pulling Belle tighter to himself. They wait, agonising moments passing.

Then, slowly, Baelfire’s eyelids flutter, and open. His eyes flicker up to Belle, and then to Rumpelstiltskin.

“Papa?” he says uncertainly. Of course, Belle thinks; the last time he saw his father was when he was under the curse of the dagger.

“It’s me, Bae,” Rumpelstiltskin says, his voice rough with emotion. He squeezes Belle’s waist, and she smiles in answer; he reaches down to touch his son’s hand. “Welcome home.”


End file.
